Heresy
by 55anon
Summary: Can Titans, she thought, be reborn as humans?


_Heretic_, her mother hissed. _You are no child of mine_.

The castle was silent, her candles guttering. Hanji rubbed her eyes as they blurred in and out of focus. The papers were dim on the table and her face was no doubt smudged with charcoal. The high windows were dark, edged that peculiar blue of dawn approaching. It was, she speculated, one of the strange quirks of evolution and the reason why Erwin's charisma had never affected her. Terrifying and marvelous to consider- the way one detail could affect an entire way of thinking.

Titans, she suspected, were not so different from humans.

_Mama look!_ She held a bouquet of yellow leaves in her hands. _It rained. But I didn't see any clouds._

_Get those out of the house!_

Later, she would overhear her mother whispering to the priest, asking for guidance.

_Father, I don't know what possesses the child. Just today she brought leaves into the house, saying it rained._

Hanji pressed her ear to the door. Low murmuring.

_Father, they were covered in blood._

Titans, for all that they were monsters, might not be the only monstrous things.

One night at Grace University, knee deep in forbidden books and heretical texts, she found an ancient book entitled _Biology_. It was late, another pre-dawn like this one, and she flipped through the pages without bothering to translate, much less read, certain that this book would also disappoint her in the hunt for Titan knowledge. By some strange twist of fate, she stopped on a page with a huge diagram of a human eye, the subsequent pages showing circles of grey and yellow dots, tables filled with random "XX" "XY" notations.

She found out that night that she was colour blind. That the human eye is made up of cones and rods which detect wavelengths of light, that there are different kinds of colour blindness, and that the trait is passed down genetically. She could dimly hear a roaring in her head as she learned that her father, whoever he had been, had undoubtedly shared her strange vision and little details- her visual acuity at night, her ability to easily pick people out of crowds, her inability to distinguish between raw and ripe fruits- suddenly fell into place. She never forgot that moment.

When her hatred of Titans threatened to burn her up completely, it was life saving.

_To see Titans from a different point of view_.

To name them after humans. To see herself in other colours. Her squad had not understood why she wailed in agony at the loss of Bean and Sonny when she showed no sign of ever being affected by catastrophic personnel losses. The ancient scholars spoke of a thing which could happen, called _going native_. She had been shocked to find that she could communicate with the Titans, that human empathy was a powerful, dangerous thing. That it went both ways, even if speech did not. It was a finding she could not report to Erwin. The wailing, she had explained, glasses eerily glinting, was for the loss of all the experiments she could have conducted on Eren.

He was a weapon, of course, but he was also their first bridge.

_The boy is an asset_.Erwin's eyes were unnaturally blue.

_You can't be fucking serious._

_The boy is a human _and_ a Titan, _she'd replied._ Think about that._

Hanji exhaled slowly, exhausted. The evidence was mounting, and damning. She was not afraid to face the truth- had never been, as it had marked her early in life. But there were some explanations easier to accept than others. The Titans within the Walls. The familiar, enraging fanaticism of Pastor Nick (_her mother's prayers and wall of hatred_) and her overwhelming desire to extract, brutally and with force, the knowledge contained in the meat of his body. Erwin fought using politics, Levi with force, but Hanji's chosen field was knowledge. Their battles took different tolls even as those same battles forged them into perfect, ruthless blades, bent on saving the remnants of humanity.

Her mother had long worshipped Maria, Rose, and Sina, the three holiest goddesses. Hanji as a child had attended mass and observed Wall Days, the liturgy ground into her as her first language. Despite her experience as a battle hardened soldier and brazen heretic, standing on the Wall mounted with cannons could send a chill up her spine. But within their religion there were apocryphal tales. She had been drawn to those stories which lingered on the fringes, and found herself wishing now that they were true.

_Long ago_, they began. _Long ago-_

Humanity was fighting a desperate battle for their survival. Titans had already overrun much of the earth and glutted themselves on entire villages, cities, razing civilisations and desecrating the land. The remaining nations gathered together and fought, only to have whole armies decimated. In humanity's darkest hour, there appeared unto humankind a Saviour, the Goddess Rose.

Rose was a towering goddess, who assembled unto herself a mighty army. With this army, she drove the Titans away from humankind's last stronghold and built a tremendous wall, stronger than the very foundations of the earth. She spoke unto the people "Within these walls I lay my promise, that humankind will always have my protection, as surely as my name is Goddess Rose." And in the days that followed, she ruled humanity wisely, rebuilding the central city, writing fair and just laws, establishing roads, townships, farms so that humanity might once more live beyond the horrors of Titanic battle. She taught humankind how to fight and defend their own borders, and took for herself a consort among the people. One day the goddess bore a child- a daughter- and humankind rejoiced, celebrating the birth of the Goddess Sina.

Sina grew to be a beautiful goddess, with long flowing yellow hair and clear grey eyes. She inherited her mother's stature and strength, and the Goddess Rose raised her to be a wise ruler, fair in judgment and a ruthless warrior. Sina fought beyond Wall Rose with unmatched speed and ferocity, and she chose for herself men and women of valour to accompany her in the fight against the Titans. In her youth she was so unmatched as a warrior that the Titans dared not approach Wall Rose, lest they be decimated by her swift flashing blades and terrible hand. It came to pass that Goddess Rose one day decided her work was done, and her daughter able to lead humanity. She returned to the sky, the kingdom of the gods, and to remind humanity of her promise, there appeared a great likeness of her image upon the gate of Wall Rose.

Goddess Sina did indeed rule the land fairly, justly, and protected humanity dutifully. But where Goddess Rose was warm and loving towards her subjects, sharing joy and delight with her people, the Goddess Sina's heart was more removed, less easily touched. It was said that Goddess Sina carried out her duty towards humanity to honour her mother's legacy, rather than any real love for humankind. She was sometimes abrupt in her speech and harsh in her judgments, her youth spent in battle having made its mark. Humanity venerated her, but perhaps also feared her, as the daughter of the Great Goddess. However, she never shirked her duties, and vowed she would follow in her mother's footsteps, to take a consort among the people and bear a daughter, who would lead humanity to prosperity.

One day, however, a soldier joined her company, whose name was Maria. Maria was a great beauty, with piercing blue eyes and black hair, but more than this she carried a lightness of spirit, a burning fire within her which could inspire even in the darkest and most hopeless of moments. Maria carried within her a great vision for humanity, and with that vision an irrepressible hope. The Goddess Sina fell in love with Maria, captivated by her beauty, her intelligence, her light, and together they embarked upon great projects for the sake of humanity.

For it was Maria and Sina whose plans and foresight brought about the great Cardinal Districts Trost, Karanese, Nedlay, and Chlorba. They, along with the architects, stonemasons, builders of old planned the cities to allow fresh water to flow, to allow clean and ordered roads, to ensure the defense of Wall Rose. Maria and Sina dispatched expeditions of explorers, cartographers, surveyors, to explore the lands beyond Wall Rose and lay down the foundations for a new wall, which would allow humankind to expand in their numbers. They sent expeditions along the rivers, they gathered ancient texts to build libraries, they encouraged crafts guilds to flourish and once dying human arts took root and began to prosper. Under the vision of Maria and Sina, all citizens served in the defense of humanity, and merchants, peasants, nobles alike did their duty learning to fight and kill the Titans. When the time came, Maria and Sina together began the construction of a new wall, far beyond Wall Rose. It was a massive effort which cost the lives of many, both in the construction and in the defense, but after years of toil, when the new wall was finished, Goddess Sina laid her hands upon the stone and named it Wall Maria, for the woman who was the light of her life.

After Wall Maria was built, humanity truly began to prosper. Farms produced a bounty of food which humanity had forgotten was possible. Wealth began to accumulate, and cities rose. The defense of Wall Maria, led by the ever fierce Goddess Sina, continued to drive Titans further away from humanity's safe centre. Yet even in a time of new peace and prosperity, discontent grew under the surface.

There were those who were jealous of Maria and her power. She was not a goddess, but beloved of one, yet ugly envy and greed swelled in the ranks of the old nobility and officers. There were those who forgot to venerate the goddesses, Rose and Sina, and thought in their arrogance that they should take power for their own selfish ambition and gain. Humans, quickly forgetting the danger and struggle of the Titans, no longer drenched in the blood which their forebears had had to face, turned their ambitions inwards and forgot worship. Maria and Sina planned to build still another wall, quarried the rock and trained soldiers when one day, in an expedition led by Maria, a party of conspirators turned against her and killed her, leaving her body to be devoured by Titans.

The grief of Goddess Sina was swift, cold, and terrible. She quickly and without mercy rooted out any and all sign of rebellion and had the ringleaders executed. The rest she forced to haul the quarried stone, all the way from the borders of Wall Maria to the city centre, where she built Wall Sina. The laborers forced to build the wall often perished, and their bones became part of the mortar. Goddess Sina, having lost her love and light of life, also lost any connection and sympathy she had for humanity. The families of the conspirators were shown no mercy, and there were whispers of terrible ghosts, awful screams which haunted the insides of the walls. When Wall Sina was finished, the goddess did not bless it. She tore down the likeness of her mother and replaced the gate images with the images of the goddess turned away, revoking the protection she had once bestowed upon humanity.

After Wall Sina was finished, the goddess ceased all explorations beyond Wall Maria. She took a consort from among the people and coldly ruled humanity. When she returned, as the Great Goddess before her, to the place of the gods in the sky, it is said that the Titans began once more to near Wall Maria, as though they sensed that humanity's greatest protector had forsaken them. And perhaps most terribly, Goddess Sina left no daughter to rule. She bore only sons. Some say that humanity will only return to rule the world again when the goddess herself returns to walk among humankind, and so pray for her protection and return. Yet other prophets have written that it is only the return of Maria who can lead to humanity's salvation, and it is only for Maria that the grey-eyed goddess will return, to restore the line and give humanity her daughter.

Light rose slowly through the window. Her candles had long extinguished themselves, in the silence.

Some ancients, it was said, believed that after a person died, they would be born again, into different lives and different bodies. They could be reborn as an animal, a plant, perhaps again as human.

_Can they be reborn as Titans?_

_Heretic! You are _NOT _my daughter!_

In her readings of biology and sex-linked genes, she knew her mother must have been a carrier. That she may herself have been colour blind, but learned long ago how to disguise it until she forgot her own vision.

Hanji never asked Mike which colours he did not see. It was possible he saw them all, and some quirk of genetics gave him a powerful, acute sense of smell.

Levi and Erwin never questioned the strange connection they had between them.

_Can Titans be reborn as humans?_

The problem with heresy and ancient books, Hanji found, was that it was difficult to know what was truth, and what was death. In moments when her mind was not consumed with questions and sparking connections, she found herself remembering the terrible blue eyes and fair hair of the Female Titan, the uncanny intelligence looking back and coldly destroying soldier after soldier. It was this vision and the memory of her mother which pushed to the fore when she held Pastor Nick on the precipice, demanding to know the truth of the Titans in the Walls. What was truth, and what heresy? What was real, and what apocryphal?

She remembered Levi's face after his first injury, years ago, and how deeply it had shaken him, though he refused to show it. She recalled Erwin's face, the masked devastation knowing that he had made a grave miscalculation. Most of her life she had never feared uncertainty, because mystery- like strategic risk, like Titanic danger- was something whose challenge she only needed to rise and meet. But finding herself in a place of half truths, murky lies, and unable to distinguish the one from the other, knowing that failure would cost beyond the scope of her own calculation was a blindness she could not stand to face.

It would have been easy, comforting, to fall back on old stories and myths. To believe, as her mother had, in the inevitability of human victory, against the Titans and against themselves, because the gods demanded it. Hanji wondered if Levi and Erwin also faced this temptation, to give up and join the other side because they at least did not question how the world was coloured.

"Did you get _any_ sleep?"

Hanji made a vague motion. "Did you know that Titans don't see the same colours that humans do?"

Levi grunted.

"It's true. The amount of light admitted by their irises is so large that it should burn out their retina and render them blind."

He set a cup of coffee in front of her and looked at her with measured stillness.

"Obviously they can see, it's just a matter of what. Have you ever wondered why before Colossal and Armoured, the Titans never managed to climb Wall Maria?"

"Is this what you've been working on all night?"

"Bean and Sonny could always tell where living people were, but they couldn't see corpses. Levi, what if Titans see _heat_ like we see colours? And they never climbed the wall because they couldn't see what we do."

He paused. "You're fucking crazy, you know that?"

"Annie could see colours like a human, otherwise she wouldn't have been able to catch us by our wires. Eren, I'm not sure. If we could have found a way-" she fell silent.

Levi nodded, following her train of thought.

"Erwin wants to see you, about the Wallist."

Hanji stilled, scenting blood. They sat for a moment, before their world would inevitably go back into motion.

"Thanks for the coffee."

She closed her books and gathered her papers. She didn't know where Erwin scrounged up his vast collection of forbidden books. Levi handed her an apple, bright yellow against his grey eyes. To this day, the blood of humans, Titans, reminded her of rain on summer leaves.

_Rain, mama. Don't be afraid, it's rain, _she'd insisted.

_Heresy_, her mother had wept, holding her close to her heart. _My child, that is heresy._


End file.
